NewsScan Daily, 14 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 14 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Retailers, Banks Invade U.K. Telecom Scene
        DoCoMo Coming to Britain
        The Personalization Paradox
        The Joy of Good Design
        Intel's Next-Generation Phones
        On Second Thought No: Oracle Drops Idea of Buying Sun

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Yesterday's Boys

RETAILERS, BANKS INVADE U.K. TELECOM SCENE
British supermarket chain Tesco and Lloyds TSB, one of the U.K.'s largest 
banks, are among a wave of non-telecom companies invading Britain's 
traditional telecom space, following the lead of Virgin Group, which added 
mobile phone service to its airline-retail conglomerate back in 1999. The 
shift spells trouble for BT, the dominant fixed-line telecom provider. 
"Half the British population is going into our stores," says Andy Dewhurst, 
CEO of Tesco's newly formed telecom division. "We can be in front of 
customers in a way that it is hard for BT to match." Tesco already has a 
branded banking business that boasts 4 million customers and is moving into 
the wireless services market, challenging the likes of Vodafone and Orange. 
If the new ventures are successful, the trend could spread to the U.S., 
says Bob House, a London-based telecom expert. In fact, Virgin has already 
done that in the wireless sector, launching Virgin Mobile USA last year in 
a joint venture with Sprint. House says other new entrants in the U.S. 
likely would also concentrate on the on the wireless market because it 
would be difficult to squeeze out a profit in the cutthroat fixed-line 
business. (Wall Street Journal 14 Oct 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106607675556446100,00.html (sub req'd)

DOCOMO COMING TO BRITAIN
The Japanese cellphone powerhouse NTT DoCoMo is planning to bring its 
i-mode mobile phone Internet service to the U.K. DoCoMo chief executive 
Keiji Tachikawa says that i-mode, a technology that allows high-speed data 
transfers, already has more than one million subscribers in Europe. First 
offered in Tokyo in 1999, i-mode has more than 40 million subscribers in 
Japan, and DoCoMo has licensed the brand and services to local telephone 
operators in several countries on the European continent. An i-mode service 
in the U.K. would compete with Europe's largest cell phone carrier, 
Vodafone Live, which has more than two million subscribers. Tachikawa says, 
"There are a number of operators who are willing to provide i-mode service 
in the U.K., and we are in negotiations with such candidates." (New York 
Times 14 Oct 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/business/worldbusiness/14doco.html

THE PERSONALIZATION PARADOX
Web personalization has been a consulting mantra for the past year, but 
according to a new report by Jupiter Research, companies that tailor pages 
according to information gathered about their visitors are just wasting 
their time (and money). "Given flexible, usable navigation and search, Web 
site visitors will be more satisfied with their experiences and will find 
fewer barriers to the profitable behavior sought by site operators. In 
fact, good navigation can replace personalization in most cases," says the 
report, titled "Beyond the Personalization Myth." In fact, the report found 
that personalizing a Web site was more than twice as likely to result in 
zero-revenue visitors, as it was to attract paying customers. The apparent 
paradox occurs because Web users are deeply suspicious of Web sites that 
try to extract information from them. More than 25% reported that they 
avoided Web site customization because of concerns that marketers would 
misuse their information. A similar percentage avoided registering on any 
Web sites for the same reason. That's bad news for Web site operators 
who've invested in personalization technology -- Jupiter says it takes more 
than four times as much money to operate a personalized site as a 
"comparable dynamic site." (CNet News.com 14 Oct 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5090716.html?tag=nefd_top

THE JOY OF GOOD DESIGN
Design guru Don Norman says the way a device looks, feels and gives 
pleasure is just as important as how it works, and that good design can 
make up for some -- though not all -- shortcomings. "How attractive 
something is will mean people will overlook some of the bad functionality, 
but not completely." His new book, "Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) 
Everyday Things," -- due out in 2004 -- focuses on the way design works at 
different levels of brain perception. "The visceral level is the low 
biological level and that's where beauty comes in and appearances matter. 
On the surface something looks attractive and feels good. That is very 
important and that makes the brain function differently," says Norman. The 
behavioral level, which controls muscles, perception and language, 
perceives an object's usability and how it feels. But Norman says the most 
important aspect of design is its ability to invoke the deeper level of 
reflection, the level that dictates how we feel about things. "That is 
where having a good brand name matters. Having a good brand name has to be 
earned because they stand for trust." Good emotional design must 
incorporate all three levels, and Norman cites Apple and Sony as two 
companies that have managed to do that well. (BBC News 14 Oct 2003)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3175506.stm

INTEL'S NEXT-GENERATION PHONES
To take advantage of the photography and multimedia functions being built 
into new cell phones, Intel has developed the StrataFlash Wireless memory 
system -- a new flash memory system that packs all memory functions into 
three or more stacked chips. An Intel executive explains, "This new device 
allows a cell phone manufacturer in the same very small footprint to be 
able to store up to an hour of full motion video. As phones get more and 
more capable and they can do all these fancy things, end users don't want 
them to get any larger. For that matter, they don't want them to get any 
more expensive, which is why having a specialized chip for low-cost data 
storage is important." Industry analyst Betsy Van Hees says, "This is a big 
move for them, and it's going to allow them to proliferate their technology 
throughout mobile handsets and have a greater share in handsets than they 
have today." (AP/USA Today 13 Oct 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2003-10-13-intel-flash-chips_x.htm

ON SECOND THOUGHT NO: ORACLE DROPS IDEA OF BUYING SUN
Oracle's Larry Ellison admits he considered the idea of buying Sun, the 
troubled company run by his friend Scott McNealy, but ultimately decided 
against it. He told Oracle shareholders: "I think it would be a bad idea. I 
don't think Oracle should go into the hardware business. But we have 
thought about it." Sun executive Michael Hakkert said simply: "Oracle 
continues to be one of our best partners. We continue to look for business 
opportunities where we can find them." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 14 Oct 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7010501.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one 
dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are 
relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, 
present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the 
present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. (Anaïs Nin)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: YESTERDAY'S BOYS.
      War veteran and award-winning war historian Paul Fussell describes 
what America's soldiers were like before they became the "Greatest Generation":
      "At this distance, it may not be easy to remember that the European 
ground war in the west was largely fought by American boys seventeen, 
eighteen, and nineteen years old. At seventeen you could enlist if you had 
your parents' written permission, but most boys waited until they were 
drafted at age eighteen. (Actually, the army contained numerous illicit 
seventeen-year-olds, their presence as soldiers more or less regularized by 
false papers not rigorously inquired into.) Some of these men-children 
shaved but many did not need to. Who were these boys, who bitched freely 
but seldom cried, even when wounded? What did they have in common? Most had 
sufficient emotional control not to express angry envy of those (like, say, 
nonflying air corps troops) who had a nicer, safer war.
      "Taken as a whole, the boys had a powerful propulsion of optimism, a 
sense that the war couldn't last forever, and that if anyone was going to 
get wounded, it would not be them. They had a common ability to simulate 
courage despite actuality: that is, a certain amount of dramatic talent, 
plus a vivid appreciation of black humor, involving plenty of irony. They 
had sufficient physical stamina to survive zero-degree cold from time to 
time, and considerable elementary camping skills of the sort common among 
civilian fishermen and hunters, which lots of survivors became after the 
war. They had to have fine eyesight, good enough to detect planted 
antipersonnel mines by their little triggers of thin wire protruding 
aboveground. They had to have a pack rat's skill in collecting small 
objects, like looted knives and forks. And preeminently, they had to have 
extraordinary luck. One infantryman's mother exhorted him to be careful. He 
answered: 'You can't be careful. You can only be lucky.'"
                                 ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679640886/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Paul Fussell, "The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern 
Europe, 1944-1945" -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate 
all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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